Please note that our HOTEL BLOCK deadline is September 5. Our current room rate is $189 per day. If you book your hotel room after September 5, you will have to contact the hotel directly and pay the $209 daily rate. So DON’T DELAY!!! Book your hotel room ASAP at this link: http://ntdconference.com/accomodations/

NEW THIS YEAR: NEED A ROOMMATE?? If you want to keep hotel costs down, we now have a form you can fill out to find a conference roommate. Please see the link below. The sooner you add yourself to this roommate list, the sooner you can find one!! Don’t delay.

NEW THIS YEAR: NEED A ROOMMATE?? If you want to keep hotel costs down, we now have a form you can fill out to find a conference roommate. Please see the link below. The sooner you add yourself to this roommate list, the sooner you can find one!! Don’t delay.

We are now accepting abstracts for the 10th International Conference on Neural Tube Defects!!! Submissions are limited to a single page, Word document, with 0.75-inch margins and 12-point font, and must include:

Title

Author(s) – presenting author in bold

Affiliation(s)

Summary of work to be presented

Contact information for the corresponding author, including email address

Research Category: Genomics of NTDs, Developmental Biology, Clinical Consequences of NTDs, Emerging Technology or Other

Please do not include images, graphics, or references as part of your submission. They will be deleted from the abstract booklet. Abstracts must be emailed as a WORD document to jgilmore@austin.utexas.edu by Saturday, August 12th.

Thank you for your patience as we've been putting this conference together. We are excited to announce that registration is now open for the 10th International Conference on Neural Tube Defects, to be held October 1-4, 2017, in Austin, TX. This year’s focus will be on:

Click here to register. If you are a postdoctoral fellow or PhD candidate, please complete the trainee registration - $325*. Otherwise, regular registration is $450*.

LODGING

The AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center is the host hotel for the International Conference on Neural Tube Defects. The room rate is $189/night, plus applicable taxes and fees. If you want to enjoy everything our city has to offer before the conference begins, we've arranged for a limited number of rooms to be available for check in starting as early as Friday, September 29.

Posters can be designed in Powerpoint: In Page Setup, set the size you would like your poster to be. For example, 42" x 60" or 36" x 54". Typical font size for the poster title at this scale would be around 90, with poster text around 24.

Posters can also be designed in Adobe Illustrator: Set the poster up (when you create the document) to scale (36 or 42 inches tall by less than 60 inches long).

I want to thank those of you who have managed to meet one of our three abstract deadlines and submitted your abstract and registered for the conference. Now for the remaining 50% of you (and you know who you are), it is time to get serious. We cannot put the Program together because we want to include your work (again, you know who you are) but we cannot if we cannot review your abstracts. And on a personal note, I am financially liable to the tune of $100,000 if we don’t make our room commitment with the ATT Center. While I am expecting a modest raise on September 1st, it is unlikely to cover this bill. So PLEASE REGISTER, PLEASE GET A ROOM, PLEASE SEND ME YOUR ABSTRACTS! We will continue to accept registrations up until the meeting or space available. We will accept abstracts until September 10th, although your chance of getting a platform presentation decreases with the passing of time.

Complete the online registration formand then proceed to payments. The link will pop up after registration has been completed to navigate to the online store that accepts credit cards. If a different payment method is selected, a conference organizer will follow-up with instructions via email.

Here is the link as well: TxShop. When completing the form, indicate a quantity of 1 in the first box and then add the number of participants in the categories below. Registration fees can be paid for multiple participants, but ensure that a registration form is completed for each individual participant.

Questions? Send an email to satterbe@austin.utexas.edu.

The first day of the NTD conference will start at 5 pm - 7 pm on 10/26/15.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone next week for the 2013 Conference on Neural Tube Defects.

Transportation options from Austin Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA) to The AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center:

Capital Metro Bus Route 100 (aka the Airport Flyer) costs $1/trip and leaves about every 30 minutes. It will take you to a central location on campus (the Trinity and 18th stop). You can walk to the ATT Center in 15 minutes or less.

Taxi service from ABIA is roughly 27$ (up to 4 persons) each way. Taxis are queued at the airport on the lower level.

SuperShuttle is a 3rd party shuttle service from ABIA. The charge is per person (16$). No reservation from the airport is required, however, one is required on the return trip from the hotel.

Several of you have asked about potential financial support for your pre- and post-doctoral trainees. Just as we did in 2011, trainee registration will be substantially discounted ($150) in comparison with the general registration fee of $325. Registration is slated to begin in early June, at which time another email will be sent.

In addition, we usually try to gather up as much financial support as possible and use that to pay for trainee lodging and any short fall in conference fees caused by the reduced registration. Many of the conference grants and funding mechanisms we use for this do not become available until just before the conference. This means that it is a good idea to prebook travel now. At the last conference, we were able to cover the hotel rooms for all 46 trainees that were in attendance. We hope to be able to do the same this year.

If you have trainees that need financial support, please email their names and status (Pre- or Post-doctoral) to NTD 2013 <ntd2013@austin.utexas.edu>.

Image courtesy of the Austin Convention and Visitor's Bureau http://www.austintexas.org/